Build Web groupware with QuickPlace

I ntegrating QuickPlace with a production NT-based Domino/Notes Release 5 environment can be daunting. Quick-Place does not use the Domino Directory for authentication, instead handling security for each Place or room in a separate database. As a consequence, you can't utilize your existing directory to populate roomsthough you can use NT user names (but not passwords).

Fulfilling my client Jobscope's goal of integrating QuickPlace rooms as subdirec-tories with its jobscope.com domain will require tight integration with Internet Information Server (IIS), which hosts the company's public site. If the IIS service is running (the default at Jobscope, where the company uses Microsoft Proxy Server to give multiple workstations browser access to the Web), the Domino server underlying QuickPlace will compete for the same Port 80 that IIS uses. Release 5 supports the new Domino on IIS feature, which removes the Domino HTTP stack in favor of IIS while launching access to Domino databases as an ISAPI task.

Unfortunately, deploying QuickPlace on top of this configuration reveals several significant bugs. First, the Offline download feature is tied to the Domino HTTP process, causing it to fail to install the unique ID file that allows secure replication. Domino also performs some redirection to provide new users with a simple URL for first-time access of a new QuickPlace; however, this does not work using the IIS stack. And QuickPlace requires a different security setting in IIS's configuration profile from the one that FrontPage authors use to upload Web pages via FrontPage Server Extensions.

Fortunately, Lotus promises work- arounds for these problems in QuickPlace 2. And Lotus is releasing a version of QuickPlace's Offline tool as Domino Runtime Services. This way Domino developers should be able to provide more and more native Notes technologies in browser clients. The forthcoming QuickPlace Development Kit (QDK) will also provide tools to smooth out the rough spots in blending these overlapping systems.